The present invention concerns generally a process and system for enabling electronic transmission and reception of confidential documents over a global communication network such as the Internet and more particularly to a method and system for distributing electronic documents containing sensitive information or data to selected entities, to a method and system for notifying intended recipients of the availability of such documents and to a method and system for tracking access, downloading and uploading of such documents.
People and businesses have become aware of the communication potential of the “Internet”, sometimes referred to as a “global communications network”, a digital communications network which enables a connection between computers worldwide. Unfortunately, security on the Internet remains imperfect, particularly since one of the Internet's design goals—an ability to route communications around damage to any node—makes it difficult to know or control the path by which any particular message will travel to reach its intended recipient, and who else will have access to it along the way. Even supposedly secure transmissions of data such as credit card information has been intercepted by “hackers”.
Network software known as “groupware,” such as “Lotus Notes,” running on a computer network within a company (a “private network” or “intranet”), permits individuals who have access to that particular network to work together efficiently by sharing documents, and editorial revisions to shared documents such as document updates, “redlined” revised drafts, and comments, as well as e-mail to create conference room collegiality and efficiency among employees actually separated in time and/or space without the security risks associated with the global network or Internet. However, there is still no entirely satisfactory way for people at different companies or other entities to have the benefits of private network security, particularly for ad hoc alliances, i.e., different sets of entities coming together to function as one mega or meta entity, for the duration of some particular project. In such a case, the time and expense of actually wiring a network between two or more companies or other entities and agreeing on one common software package or standard presents a barrier to conventional network solutions. Simply using the Internet remains imperfectly secure for transmission of confidential information without some pre-arranged encryption and present methods for pre-arranging secure encryption processes have been cumbersome and unproductive. Thus, there is a yet-unsolved problem of permitting different groups of companies or other entities to communicate securely over a global network for different projects, to quickly and inexpensively obtain the benefits of secure groupware in connection with each project, and to be able to add and drop entities without difficulty with respect to any particular project. For example, in the banking industry, ad hoc syndicates are formed under the leadership of one or more lead banks to permit a number of agent or associate banks to participate in a major loan to a borrower. Such loans have become more common and may involve loans in excess of one billion dollars. Syndication of such large loans is used since any one bank is not prepared to lend such a large amount to a single customer. Conventionally, proposed terms of a loan are negotiated between the borrower and the lead banks, each in consultation with its advisors such as legal counsel, public-relations consultants, accountants and insurance carriers. In some instances, some advisors may be in-house advisors as employees of a given entity and thus constitute an internal team. However, the advisors in many instances may be independently associated with external entities such as law firms or major accounting firms and thus constitute either external teams or combinations of the above. The lead bank(s) negotiates with the borrower to arrive at terms and conditions for the loan, such as the interest rate, repayment schedule, security and the bank's fee for processing and syndicating the loan. The lead bank may agree to underwrite the entire loan in which case the lead bank uses syndication to create sub-loans between it and other banks to raise the funds for the loan. All of these transactions require management of voluminous amounts of documentation, most of which is confidential and whose disclosure could result in huge damages to the borrower or lenders. Thus, it would be desirable to provide a system which enables secure document transmission between users over a global communication network without requiring the users to communicate in advance to establish an encryption method.